"Acquiescent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... questions, but shortly gave this up when he recognised that the narration was concise and self-explanatory. Thenceforth, he contented himself with quick looks and glances, easily interpreted, or by some acquiescent motions of his hands, when such could be convenient, to emphasise his idea of the correctness of any inference. Until Adam ceased speaking, having evidently come to an end of what he had to say with regard to this ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... end of two hours Nancy returned, the two clerks and the manager accompanying her. The store people were slightly flushed, Nancy herself sullenly acquiescent. For the first time in her life she had had the opportunity to buy enough clothes of her own, and yet she hadn't been allowed to choose what she really wanted. Gently but inexorably they had rejected the garments Nancy selected, smoothly insisting that these weren't "just the thing" ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... the issue had no definite feature. The people demanded freedom of the Press and a German parliament, and the various princes seemed acquiescent; but when it was proposed that Prussia should become Germany, there was opposition on all sides; a Diet of the Confederation was held, but Frederick William IV., king of Prussia, refused to accept the title of hereditary emperor which was offered him. Austria and Prussia came into ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... the other the fates of England and Europe; the fortunes of Marlborough and of Swift on their way from dictatorship, in each case, to dotage and death; the big wars and the notable literary triumphs as well as the hopeless passions or acquiescent losses. It is thus an instance—and the greatest—of that revival of the historical novel which was taking place, and in which the novel of Scott(1)—simpler, though not so very simple as is sometimes thought—is being dashed with a far heavier dose of the novel-element as opposed to the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mature into a gentleman-farmer. His figure lent itself: burly and handsome. His face remained fresh and his blue eyes as full of light, his thick hair and beard had turned gradually to a silky whiteness. It was his custom to laugh a great deal, in his acquiescent, wilful manner. Things had puzzled him very much, so he had taken the line of easy, good-humoured acceptance. He was not responsible for the frame of things. Yet he was afraid of the unknown ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... summer of it. And that it should be a reciprocated passion. The wiseacres were smiling at him, he supposed; smiling as the world always smiled at the spectacle of infatuate age mating with tolerant, indifferently acquiescent youth. Smiled and wondered how long it would be before youth awoke and turned to its own. Well, he could afford to smile at the wiseacres. And at the green inexperienced young, as well, who thought that love was exclusively their ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... pine-boles now; For she is busy gathering sticks, increasing Her distance as she may. The noon is sultry, Heated and clammy, I, Towards the live waves turning, slip my tunic, Then run in naked. Cooled and soothed by swimming, Both mind and heart from their late tumult tuned To placid acquiescent health, I float, suspended in the limpid water, Passive, rhythmically governed; So tranced worlds ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... not due to his having taken care that the Whig dogs or the Tory dogs shall not have the best of it, to his having written as a gentleman for gentlemen, or as an uneasy anti-aristocrat for uneasy anti-aristocrats, as a believer (fervent or acquiescent) in the supernatural, or as a person who lays it down that miracles do not happen, as an Englishman or a Frenchman, a classic or a romantic. Very difficult indeed is the chase and discovery of these enemies: for extra-literary ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... self-reproach—some, of course, but there were other things dominant in him now, far more urgent. He was not so much in love with Gloria as mad for her. Unless he could have her near him again, kiss her, hold her close and acquiescent, he wanted nothing more from life. By her three minutes of utter unwavering indifference the girl had lifted herself from a high but somehow casual position in his mind, to be instead his complete preoccupation. However much ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... recent betrothal could be nowhere else half so sweet as in that wild and lovely place. She began to imagine a bliss so divine, that it would have been strange if she had not begun to desire it, and it was with a half reluctant, half-acquiescent thrill that she suffered him to touch upon what was first in both ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... and I'll propose after dinner a stroll in the gardens, and you can manage to walk a little with me." She stopped again, returned, said, "It was very kind of you to think of me at Sacramento," held out her hand, allowed it to remain for an instant, cool but acquiescent, in his warmer grasp, and with the same odd youthfulness of movement and gesture slipped out ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... acquiescent and the boatswain and his charge were soon discussing a hearty meal with molasses, vinegar and water for a beverage instead ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... to. They rode in, and the British flag was hoisted. With charming effrontery it was represented that the twenty-one were only the forerunners of an overwhelming force, and that resistance was useless. The Dutch were cowed or acquiescent, and a splendid reception was given to the army of occupation; cheering, flag-waving, and refreshments galore. Their commanding officer mounts the Town Hall steps, and addresses the townspeople, congratulating them on their loyalty, announcing the speedy end of the war, hinting ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... tender-hearted that he could not bear to witness the pain or distress of any person, however disagreeable or undeserving, was quite acquiescent in believing that God would punish human beings, in millions, for ever, for a purely intellectual error of comprehension. My Father's inconsistencies of perception seem to me to have been the result of a curious irregularity of equipment. Taking for granted, as he did, the absolute ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... without overt breach, we fall apart, Tacitly sunder—neither you nor I Conscious of one intelligible Why, And both, from severance, winning equal smart. So, with resigned and acquiescent heart, Whene'er your name on some chance lip may lie, I seem to see an alien shade pass by, A spirit wherein I have no lot or part. Thus may a captive, in some fortress grim, From casual speech betwixt his warders, learn That June on her triumphant progress goes Through arched and ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... been an age of rebels in letters as in life. Of course, acquiescent writers have existed as well, just as in the Ark (to keep up the illustration) vegetarians stood side by side with carnivors, and hoofs were intermixed with claws. The great majority have, as usual, supported traditional order, have eulogised the past or present, and been, not ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... sent off like this was most galling to the Count, but his youth and perfect health allowed him not the shadow of a pretext. He was obliged to pack his valise and start. He pretended to look pleased and acquiescent, but in his eyes I could ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... mortal sky, and when he refused to stare up into their leaden pinions, they stooped to him and buffeted and smothered him, until he was such a mass of bruised suffering within that he could almost believe his body also was quivering into the numbness of acquiescent misery. And here were the wings again. They were even lower, in spite of this clear air. They did not merely shut it out from his nostrils, but the filthy pinions swept his face and roused in him the ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... velvet coat was threadbare, and his short slouched hat, of an antique pattern, revealed a rustiness which marked it an "original," and not one of the picturesque reproductions which brethren of his craft affect. His eye was mild and heavy, and his expression singularly gentle and acquiescent; the more so for a certain pallid leanness of visage, which I hardly knew whether to refer to the consuming fire of genius or to a meagre diet. A very little talk, however, cleared his brow and brought ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... in which she had assented to the Constitution, further justification were needed for the belief of Virginia in the right of secession, it was assuredly to be found in the apparent want of unanimity on so grave a question even in the Republican party, and in the acquiescent attitude of ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... her better even than she knew herself, and it may have been through ignorance greater than her own that the men were more acquiescent. But the men too were not so acquiescent, or not at ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... the arm she held was one of steel. To what end she and her sisters and her mother had been sacrificed she could not yet divine: but the encounter by the bridge had reawakened the Wesley pride in her, and she walked acquiescent in a fate beyond her ken. She knew, too, that he had dismissed the squabble from his mind and was thinking of her confession and her soul's danger. But here she would ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy, and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage. ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... the platform for Children's Day exercises with the other little girls of the infant class; in her stiff white dress, never a curl awry or a wrinkle in her stocking, keeping her little comrades in order by the acquiescent gravity of her face, which seemed to say, "How pleasant it is to do thus ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... may with some confidence be prescribed as a sedative and lowering diet. It seems probable that the weakness of British diplomacy induced the belief at St. Petersburg that no opposition of any account would be forthcoming. With France acting as the complaisant treasurer, and Germany acquiescent, the Czar and his advisers might well believe that they had reached the goal of their efforts, "the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... gesture of acquiescent anguish and despair, he let her pass, held open the door, and closed it softly, so as not ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and mean, accompanied, indeed, with the sense of a falling short of perfection, and yet, at the same time, so promising of our social and individual progression, that we would not, if we could, exchange it for that repose of the mind which dwells on the forms of symmetry in the acquiescent admiration of grace. This general characteristic of the ancient and modern drama might be illustrated by a parallel of the ancient and modern music;—the one consisting of melody arising from a succession only of pleasing sounds,—the modern embracing harmony ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge |
